[If Rank Points Are Truly Here To Stay]

And changing a computer program is fairly simple for most good programmers.

[If Rank Points Are Truly Here To Stay]

Howdy Jabez.

 

about 2 years back, I was at a 5 stage monthly match.

 

I won 4 of the stages. I had a miss on one of the stages that the top 10 shooters didn't have a miss. BUT, those top 10 shooters did have a miss on other stages.

 

Anyhow, I earned 11 rank points on that stage for a total of 15 rank on the day (best of my memory).

 

I placed 2nd to the shooter who ranked with 8 or 10 points and only won 1 of those stages.

 

I agree with you that sometimes, consistency isn't the name of the game but rather the point and time your inconsistency happens determines the size of its ill effects (I hope I stated that right. Sounds to phylosophical to me)....

 

 

..........Widder

 

When you earned 11 rank points that meant 10 other people finished ahead of you on that stage alone.

 

Rank points really is a count of how many people finished ahead of you in the entire match (minus the number of stages in the match). It gives you a value for your performance over all the stages. Think of it as how many times you were beaten that day.

 

The guy who came in 2nd with 8 or 10 points..... You won 4 stages so the best he could have done on them was 2nd. That'd give him 8 points for those 4 of the 5 stages. So he probably won the match with 9 or 10 points. That meant for the entire 5 stages, he was beaten 8 or 9 times that match.

 

He finished with 9 or 10 points. How often was he beaten? Either 4 or 5 times.

You finished with 15 points. How often were you beaten? 10 times.

 

Who got beaten the most that day?

 

Rank is just a scoring system. It makes a pretty good job of showing how many times each entrant had someone finish better than they did.

 

Matches that have a lot of different length stages, rank is a very good way to pick the best shooter. With matches where all the stages take very little time, rank still shows what it shows. However, speed is the name of the game, and rank isn't a speed result. So using TT is probably the most suitable way to score today's matches.

[If Rank Points Are Truly Here To Stay]

Rank points came about to make up for the disparity between long stages and short ones. A time based penalty really screwed you in a very short stage and often did little or nothing much to you in a very long stage. 5 seconds in a 19 second stage hurts more than one in a 30 second one.

 

Nowadays with almost all the stages taking about the same amount of time, TT makes more sense for choosing a winner.

 

Simple solution is quit basing penalties on time if the results are based on rank points. For matches based on ranking, base the penalties on ranking. The confusion and unfairness comes from having the results based differently than the penalties are based.

[If Rank Points Are Truly Here To Stay]

In this day and age of computer scoring, the solution is simple, calculate both overall and category rank points, and use each accordingly. Yes, this would create some cases where a shooter would place higher in category than another shooter, but lower overall, but at least then each placement is based correctly.

 

 

Bingo....

 

and dead simple to code

[If Rank Points Are Truly Here To Stay]

Capital idea! This would indeed remove the variable penalty. Without the higher math - a Safety can vary in RP greatly depending on the number of shooters and the average stage times. A formula equalizing the RP penalty should be workable and not too hard to create. Bud sounds like the guy who has the brains and knowledge base to to it.

 

CR

 

It's even simpler than you describe if you're talking about coding the logic into scoring software.

 

Scoring software in use now has a point in the computations where the time penalty is added in. It has to be computed of course, just as misses are. Simply delete that computation and move the penalty logic into or just beyond where the pass is made that assigns rank points.

 

Or do you wish to keep the time penalty as well? That would require a touch more sophistication to the changes, but still is easily possible for most programmers that understand the new rules.

[If Rank Points Are Truly Here To Stay]

For matches based on rank points, basing the penalties on rank points makes sense.

 

Simply write it into the scoring software and move on.